


There's No Shame In Trying Again

by Marielle



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-31
Updated: 2014-02-02
Packaged: 2018-01-10 16:24:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1161922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marielle/pseuds/Marielle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Kuroko stumbles upon a mysterious mirror in his house, it unexpectedly takes him back to his Teiko years where he meets the Generation of Miracles once more before their transformation. What exactly is this mirror, and who gave it to him? And what will Kuroko learn as he lives through the events once more?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> My contribution to Kuroko's birthday! Rather rushed and unedited, but hope you enjoy!

It was a day of such clear blue skies that it was hard to believe it was spring.

That was the day Kuroko Tetsuya found the mirror.

It was a strange little thing, really. He had discovered it while cleaning the house. It was there, lying innocently, as if it had been there the whole time. However, Kuroko knew it hadn’t been. He had passed by the table so many times and only now had it caught his eye.

He asked his father about it, but the older Kuroko said he didn’t know about it. Kuroko couldn’t find his mother, but she was often too busy to be bothered with small trinkets such as this. Even if she had known about it, Kuroko doubted that she would’ve told him anyway.

Kuroko picked it up, feeling the metal decorations cold against his palm. It was quite small, barely bigger than his hand, and quite light as well. He wondered what such a thing was doing here. Perhaps Kagami had left it when he had come over for lunch yesterday. But Kuroko didn’t think Kagami was one who carried these types of things around.

Holding it up slightly, Kuroko could see his own reflection staring back. He absentmindedly noted how much he had changed since Teiko, and, at the same time, how little. He still had the same teal hair that looked atrocious every morning. He still wore his expressionless mask and deadpan tone almost everywhere he went.

Kuroko raised a finger to trace across his reflection. His hand, as well as the rest of his body, was still small. He had grown a little since middle school and he wasn’t _too_ short, but the tallness of everyone around him only further served to diminish both his presence and his stature.

Shaking himself out of his thoughts, Kuroko gave one more glance at the mirror. It didn’t grow legs and walk away. It didn’t use misdirection. It didn’t even sprout wings and fly. It simply laid in his hand like an ordinary mirror would do. Kuroko moved to place it back on the table, making a mental note to himself to return it to the owner as soon as possible.

However, as soon as the mirror left his hand, it suddenly exploded in light. Kuroko quickly covered his eyes, wondering what exactly was going on. He was so preoccupied with the brightness that he didn’t notice the subtle feeling of his body being sucked away, nor the disappearing room around him.

When the brightness finally faded away and he was no longer blinded, Kuroko knew right away that something was wrong. First, the temperature had risen and the air was quite stuffy, much more humid than it had been in his house. Secondly, his surroundings had changed. Now, he was in a gym. A very _familiar_ gym.

The Teiko gym.

Thirdly, as soon as he managed to right himself, still a little unstable from what seemed to be either teleportation or his newfound ability to fly, he heard a rather high pitched scream.

Whirling around and expecting to be eaten by a pack of monsters, Kuroko was surprised that there was nothing but a shaking lump in the corner of the room that did not at all look intimidating. Slowly, as he walked over, Kuroko could start to make out the details of that said lump.

It was, in fact, not a monster, but a person who had tucked his head between his knees and covered his head with his two hands. He was trembling a lot, and as Kuroko drew closer, the figure became more and more familiar and Kuroko couldn’t help but let out a small gasp.

“Aomine-kun?”

The boy turned around, looking like he was ready to pee in his pants and pass out at any moment. The two met each other’s eyes in surprise. Aomine because the rumored ghost he had come looking for had instead morphed into a person, and Kuroko because he hadn’t seen Aomine this vulnerable in a long time.

And that’s where Kuroko’s story, for better or worse, began for the second time.

* * *

“You’re really trying hard to get promoted, aren’t you? It makes me want to work harder too.” There was no trace of the pitiful Aomine who had been crying on the gym floor just an hour before. Now, after some extra practice with Kuroko, his mood had reached its peak and he hummed happily, oblivious to the troubled boy next to him.

What was this? He had recited his old lines and everything seemed to have gone smoothly, but now the more he thought about it more, the stranger it was. Had he travelled to the past? Back to his second year at Teiko?

Kuroko was sure that the bright light he had witnessed had been the cause of this, but where had it come from? The mirror? Was that even possible? What if he did something that was inconsistent with what had happened? Would he change the future?

“Hey, you’ve been rather quiet, Tetsu. What are you thinking about?”

Pushing his thoughts out of his head, Kuroko decided to think about that later. The predicament would still be there later; it wouldn’t go away even if Kuroko wanted to. He hadn’t brought the mirror with him, anyways, so it wouldn’t be very easy to get back to his time.

Besides, it had been awhile since he had last been able to talk to Aomine like this, and Kuroko found himself selfishly wanting to stay here for just a couple more hours if only to see Aomine grin and laugh like he used to.

“Nothing, Aomine-kun.” Kuroko cast him a sideways look. “Why do you call me Tetsu?”

“It’s because it’s shorter, right? It’s much easier to say.” An easy grin appeared on his face, a look so foreign nowadays that it made Kuroko’s heart clench. “Why do you call me Aomine-kun? Isn’t that a mouthful?”

“Not at all, Aomine-kun.”

Aomine sighed, but when it was clear that Kuroko wasn’t going to budge, he dropped the subject. His face, however, quickly lit up again. “Hey, do you have time? Let’s go to the convenience store and buy some popsicles.”

Kuroko blinked. _That_ was different than he remembered. Two years ago, when he and Aomine had first met, they had parted right after practice. It wasn’t until two weeks later that they went to the convenience store for the first time, and that time they had gone with both Murasakibara and Midorima.

He hadn’t starting going out to the convenience store with Aomine until he had been admitted into the first string.

What did this mean? Did it mean that this wasn’t his past that he was currently in? Then what was it, exactly?

Or perhaps, Kuroko told himself, he was just remembering incorrectly. It had been so many years. It was normal to forget a small fact such as going to the convenience store, wasn’t it?

“Oi, Tetsu, are you alright? You keep spacing out on me.” Aomine waved his hand wildly in front of Kuroko’s face, a slight look of worry on his face.

“Sorry. I’ll be happy to go with you, Aomine-kun.”

“I’m going to wait till the day you bite your tongue trying to say that and say, ‘I told you so!’”

Kuroko couldn’t help but smile slightly. “I’ll be looking forward to that, Aomine-kun.”

* * *

The two of them bought their popsicles and headed towards the park. Aomine did most of the talking, but Kuroko didn’t mind. It was nice to hear his happy, carefree voice again, even if that voice _was_ talking about women with big boobs.

However, there was only so much of that Kuroko could take, and after awhile, he started tuning out. Aomine’s voice still wormed its way into his mind, but he didn’t process any of the words that Aomine was spewing out.

“And then Satsuki got mad at me the other day when she found it in my bag. She was the one who gave me the money in the first place! What did she expect me to buy, notebooks for class? Of course I was going to go buy the magazines! Any normal guy would go buy them! You would too, wouldn’t you?”

“Of course, Aomine-kun.”

Aomine suddenly stopped, and Kuroko had no choice but to do so as well. “Oi, were you listening just now, Tetsu?”

“Of course I was, Aomine-kun.”

Aomine took one look at Kuroko’s emotionless face and scowled. “You weren’t! You were tuning me out just now, weren’t you?” He gave a rather dramatic sigh. “I suppose that I’ll have to start from the very beginning—”

“That’s alright, Aomine-kun. Let’s just move on to the next topic, Aomine-kun.”

Aomine glared at him. “Stop it with the ‘Aomine-kun’ after each sentence! It reminds me of Satsuki, calling me ‘Aomine-kun’ this and ‘Aomine-kun’ that. It’s so weird.”

Kuroko smiled slightly, remembering how Momoi told him that the reason for her sudden change was because she didn’t want people to start talking. “My apologies, Aomine-kun.”

Aomine mistook the smile as if Kuroko was making fun of him and scowled. He looked like he was about to say something else when his attention was redirected to the crowd of people in the park. “Hey, what’s going on there? Isn’t it too late to be out here?”

Aomine sped up with Kuroko behind him, trying to catch up with his long strides. Kuroko was a little shocked at how fast Aomine already was, but Kuroko knew that he would get a lot faster in the future.

As the two of them got closer, Kuroko could see the faint outline of cameras and bright lights and...

A certain blonde that he had most definitely not seen on this day two years ago.

“Kise-kun?”

Aomine cast him a surprised look, but Kuroko’s gaze was focused on Kise, who heard his name, excused himself and walked over.

“Hello,” Kise said, smiling, but Kuroko could spot no hint of recognition in his eyes. At least this part of the timeline stayed consistent—Kuroko briefly wondered if meeting Kise now instead of later would change the future. “Was there something you wanted?”

“That wasn’t me. Tetsu’s the one who called you.” Aomine pointed at the boy next to him.

Kise blinked and blinked, not seeing anyone. He was about to turn back to Aomine to tell him that his jokes really weren’t funny when a teal haired boy seemingly materialized out of thin air and appeared in front of him.

“Whooooaaaa! Since when were you here?!”

He was so used to the reaction that his response was almost robotic. “I’ve been here this whole time.”

Kise placed a hand on his heart, as if trying to calm himself down. However, he made no moves to drape himself all over Kuroko, nor did the words ‘Kurokocchi’ and ‘Aominecchi’ come from his mouth. It had been awhile since this had last happened, and although Kuroko was grateful for the distance, he had gotten so used to Kise’s happy-go-lucky personality that his polite, yet distant smile seemed rather out of place.

“Oi, Tetsu, do you know this guy?”

Knowing that he couldn’t just say that they would be teammates in the near future—thought he was a little tempted to do so just to see their reactions—Kuroko instead said, “I’ve seen him in magazines.”

Kise’s face seemed to brighten instantly. “Have you really? Are you a subscriber?”  

“No. I just see them often in the trash at school.”

To Aomine’s surprise, Kise started crying.

“It’s okay, Aomine-kun,” Kuroko reassured him as Aomine still looked like a deer caught in headlights, looking like he was caught between going over to comfort the crying model and running away as fast as he could. Some of the staff looked over to see what the commotion was, but they were all used to Kise’s antics, so they didn’t do anything else to calm him down, though one woman yelled at Kise to stop crying lest it ruined his makeup. “This is normal behavior.”

Kise sobbed harder.

Aomine seemed to get over his initial shock and the two of them starting taking jabs at each other like little kids. Kuroko, silently apologizing to the world for introducing this catastrophic duo to each other, cut in and asked, “Why are you doing this at night, Kise-kun?”

Kise turned his attention back to Kuroko, though it took him a few moments before he could spot the boy again. Aomine was still spewing out words, but no one was really listening to him except some of the staff, who recognized him and came over to ask for his autograph.

“It’s to avoid the fans,” Kise said easily. “I wanted to do an outdoor shot, but it would attract too many people during the day and would’ve made the modeling a lot harder. That’s why we’re doing it now.”

“Couldn’t you have done it indoors?” Kuroko asked bluntly.

“Yes, but—”

“No.” Kuroko cut him off before Kise could give his longwinded excuse that Kuroko knew was coming.

Kise burst into tears again and Aomine, not being particularly smart enough to learn from the past, jumped again at the sound.

Kise, Kuroko decided, really hadn’t changed all that much.

-

“Ehh, Kise’s amazing. His face is on the front cover of so many magazines, and he’s able to model and keep up with school at the same time,” Aomine smirked. “Though his grades could certainly use improvement.”

“I wouldn’t be the one to talk, Aomine-kun.”

Aomine glared at him. “Can’t you side with me once, Tetsu? You’ve been against me this whole evening. I’m starting to think you’re a secret agent sent to lower my self esteem.”

“I apologize, Aomine-kun. You’re the best, Aomine-kun.”

Aomine continued to scowl at him, before looking away and sighing. “There’s no point in being the best, you know? It’s not fun anymore if there’s no chance that you’ll lose, or if people give up the will to fight you.”

Knowing the future—or, at least, the future that happened in his timeline—Aomine’s statement only made Kuroko feel worse. “There’s always someone better than you,” Kuroko chose his words carefully. He had messed up the first time with Aomine; he was going to try everything he could to make sure that he didn’t do it again. “You’ll just have to wait until you find him.”

There was a silence, and Kuroko wondered if he had made him mad. However, Aomine turned towards him after awhile. “Hey, Tetsu...”

He cut off, his eyes widening slightly. “O-oi...I know you’re good at being invisible, but isn’t that going a little too far?”

“What?” Kuroko blinked at him, having no idea what he was referring to.

Aomine gestured wildly towards his body. “You! You’re turning all white on me!” Aomine stopped to think for awhile. “Can you actually turn invisible? Can you think of how helpful that’d be? You could sneak into the girls’ locker room any time you wanted and—”

Kuroko glanced down at himself and could see that parts of his body were starting to glow. Knowing quite clearly that he couldn’t just disappear, Kuroko was suddenly struck with a sudden feeling of déjà vu.

“Aomine-kun,” he managed to get out.

His former partner turned towards him, a puzzled look on his face, but before either of them could say anything, a blanket of white engulfed Kuroko and everything faded away.

* * *

When Kuroko came to again, he was back in his house. He blinked a couple of times, and then swiveled his head to look at the clock. Barely a minute had passed since his little adventure with Aomine. The house, peaceful and quiet when he had left, was in the same state as it was now.

Kuroko looked down at the table.

The mirror stared back innocently at him.

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kuroko meets the rest of them, and has a rather surprising encounter with someone who is not supposed to be there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm planning to do a chapter from one of the GOM's point of views (preferably Kise or Aomine) for a reason I will not state yet. Is there any preference?  
> And on a scale of 1-OOC, how high is this chapter?

Kuroko spent the next few days inquiring about the mirror.

“Huh?” Kagami said when Kuroko approached him. “What do I think of that? It’s okay, I guess. Didn’t know you were interested in these kinds of things, though.”

“Mirror,” Izuki muttered to himself. “Mirror...mirror...” His face suddenly lit up. “I got one! A mirror—hey, where’d you go, Kuroko?!”

“Your Eagle Eye is rather useless, isn’t it?” Kagami muttered under his breath.

“Hah? I’m an expert on Sengoku warlord figurines, not mirrors!” Hyuuga was angrier than expected. “You freshmen lack respect!” He stomped off, muttering darkly under his breath.

“Don’t worry about Hyuuga,” Kiyoshi said. “He just thinks you’re questioning his manliness.”

Mitobe, of course, was no help at all and simply shrugged.

“He says that he’s never seen anything like it before,” Koganei translated. “His sisters have a collection of mirrors, but none of them resemble that at all.”

Sometimes, Kuroko thought that the most talented person on the team was clearly Koganei. He could transform Mitobe’s silence into long, cohesive sentences. But, maybe, it got easier with practice. Maybe it was because Kuroko himself didn’t have any experience in this department. After all, none of his former teammates at Teiko were particularly quiet.

“It’s pretty,” Kiyoshi had commented, taking it out of Kuroko’s hands. “Can I keep it?” Kuroko had to use quite an amount of persuasion and misdirection to get it back, as Kiyoshi fully utilized his taller height to his advantage. It took Hyuuga coming over to yell at Kiyoshi for slacking off during practice for Kuroko to be able to steal it back.

“I didn’t know you liked these types of things, Teppei,” Riko stared at the mirror intensely. Kuroko wondered if she could gather the stats from inanimate objects just like she did with people’s bodies. “Where did you get this, Kuroko-kun?”

“I found it in my house,” Kuroko replied honestly. “I think someone left it there, so I’m trying to find out who it belongs to.”

And why it brought him back to the past for two hours.

“Hmm,” Riko scrutinized it for awhile longer, but no definite answer seemed to pop out at her. She—to Kuroko’s relief—handed it back to him without any protest. “Perhaps you can ask one of your old teammates? They could’ve sent it to you as a gift.”

“There are no special occasions near now.”

Riko shrugged. “Does Kise look like the type of person to care what date it is? If he wants to buy you something, he’ll do it.”

Kuroko couldn’t argue with that.

But if Kise really was the one to send it to him, he would’ve made the gift more dramatic. No doubt there would have been roses and glitter adorning the edge of the mirror. The lack of those and also the word ‘Kurokocchi!!’ convinced Kuroko that Kise was, in fact, not the culprit.

But who else from his old team would do this? Momoi was a possibility, but with her database, it was highly unlikely that she would’ve gifted something that she knew he had no need for. Besides, she never would have just left it there; she wouldn’t pass up a chance to see him again.

Aomine was out of the question. He wouldn’t be caught dead buying something like this.

Midorima had no reason to buy something like this, or to gift anything to Kuroko in general. The shooting guard had always stated that the two of them didn’t get along. Besides, the idea of Midorima going gift shopping was rather scary.

Unless, of course, it was for the day’s lucky item. Then that would explain everything.

Kuroko checked. It wasn’t.

Murasakibara never bothered with anything that was not edible. Kuroko clamped his teeth over the mirror, attracting several weird looks.

So it wasn’t edible.

That left Akashi, and he was the most probable one. He often delivered things in cryptic, mysterious ways, and Kuroko wouldn’t put it past him to get his hands on something like this mirror. So now he had narrowed his suspect list down to...well, one. Now all he had to do was figure out what it meant.

He had “enter” the mirror again, but to no avail. He had repeated everything he had done. Placed it on the table, picked it up and examined it, and then put it back down again. There was no flash of light and definitely no Aomine from his Teiko days.

Now it was just an ordinary mirror with no superpowers. Maybe he had dreamed up the whole thing. Maybe it was just a figment of his imagination.

Kuroko thought back to it. He had Aomine-kun again. He had met Kise for the first time outside of basketball. Though the order was shuffled up, both events had happened in the past. The encounters hadn’t been exactly the same, though most of that had to do with Kuroko’s different responses.

Kuroko sighed, closing the book he had been reading. He had done a lot of research, but no books even remotely mentioned the strange phenomenon the mirror had exhibited. Feeling rather exhausted and down for his rather useless efforts, Kuroko padded over to his bed, feeling a wave of tiredness wash over him.

With his eyes closed, he didn’t notice the flash of light emitted from an object placed on his desk.

* * *

Kuroko woke up to the sound of beeps.

Groggily, he opened his eyes. An unknown environment appeared in front of him. The whiteness of the walls stung his eyes as he blinked rapidly, trying to clear them. A thin, uncomfortable blanket covered his body, the texture stinging at his skin.

Where was he?

He was suddenly ripped out of thoughts by the loud sound of the door slamming open and a loud yell of ‘Kurokocchi!’ Before he could comprehend anything else, he was tackled into a suffocating hug.

“Oi Kise, you’re going to kill him.” His savior—or in this case, also known as Aomine Daiki—scowled as he pulled the crying blonde off from Kuroko. His expression quickly changed into one of worry as he faced Kuroko. “Tetsu, are you feeling alright?”

Ah. So he was back at Teiko.

However, if he remembered correctly, he had never gotten injured to the point of hospitalization except for that one instant before his match with Ogiwara. And then, the Generation of Miracles had already begun their transformation. There was only Akashi to visit him the first time he woke up, and the second time he was alone and forced to discover the horror his team had inflicted on Ogiwara.

He had hated not only basketball after that match. He had hated his team, the very people he strived to be more like. He always admired their skills and his lack of, but seeing their egoistical behavior towards their opponents frankly made him hate being around them.

However, seeing Kise and Aomine bickering loudly, Kuroko realized that he never could quite hate them.

Although, when Aomine accidentally flipped a nearby jug over and soaking the bottom half of the blankets, Kuroko realized that they weren’t too far from ‘strongly dislike’ either.

The door opened again, and this time, a giant ladybug stuff animal came in. “I told you that fate was not on your side today.” Midorima Shintarou spoke with an air of authority—not as much as Akashi, but still with enough to command respect.

The green glasses were snatched off his face.

...a respect he unfortunately did not get with the other two individuals in the room.

“Give it back,” Midorima said, but surprisingly made no move to do so.

“You can live without them for awhile,” Aomine said, handing the glasses over to Kise. “Oi, Tetsu, you be the judge.”

Kuroko blinked, rather confused. However, before he could ask any questions, Kise put on Midorima’s glasses and turned to him, beaming widely. “Kurokocchi, how do I look? Do I look cool?”

“You look ridiculous, Kise-kun.”

“So mean!”

“I told you so,” Aomine said, smug about his supposed victory.

Kuroko thought about Kise’s over familiarity. That meant that some time had to have passed between this flashback and his previous one. At least, enough time had gone by to have Kise join the first string as well as his and Kuroko’s game with the second string.

Thank goodness he didn’t have to go through half a year’s worth of practicing with the third string again. He had thrown up so commonly then that it amazed even him that he had managed to preserve through it.

Not that the practices were getting any better, though. He could take it during the winter, but he became a puddle of mess during the summer. It didn’t help that Kagami, naturally taller and more athletic, seemed to do everything so effortlessly.

“Waa, it’s so loud in here.” Murasakibara hit his head on top of the door as he was trying to come in, causing him to drop his bag of chips on the floor. The chips scattered on the floor and Murasakibara dropped down even faster than Kuroko had ever seen Aomine move. “Forty second rule,” he muttered under his breath, hastily collecting the pieces.

They all waited, but surprisingly, a certain person remained silent.

Aomine spun around. “Oi, are you feverish? Don’t you usually say something like, ‘Mursakibara. Don’t eat off the floor. It’s bad manners.’”

There was no response.

Kise set Midorima’s glasses on top of his head. “Doesn’t he look rather lost?” He peered at Midorima, but the latter made no move to acknowledge him. “Midorimacchi is blinder than I thought.”

Aomine squinted and Midorima, as if feeling the weight of the stares, shifted uncomfortably. “Hey, you’re right? He looks like a deer caught in headlights now.”

“Isn’t that bad?” Kise seemed to come to a certain revelation. “What if the other team takes off his glasses during the match? He’ll be like a fish out of water!”

“Stop comparing me to animals.”

“His hearing seems okay. Maybe he can, I dunno, use sound waves to find out where the basket is and shoot without being able to see.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Aomine. Even I can’t shoot without my glasses.”

Aomine chose to ignore him and instead redirected his attention toward the ground.  “Oi, Murasakibara, what do you think you’re doing?”

“Murasakicchi, are you _licking_ the ground?”

“Ehhh, how else am I supposed to get these little pieces? It’s not good to waste.” Murasakibara looked up. “They’re too small and I keep crushing them.”

“Murasakibara-kun, please stop,” Kuroko finally spoke up. “I’ll buy you more bags later, so please leave the chips on the floor alone.”

Kuroko had been thinking. He didn’t remember this exact scenario, but this situation had come up rather often. After all, Murasakibara always hoarded sweets everywhere, and once in awhile, they were bound to spill.

Though he had never heard anything about the magic of Midorima’s glasses. Perhaps he would have to employ that tactic the next time Seirin played against Shutoku.

“Waaa, really, Kuro-chin?” Murasakibara got up, much to everyone’s relief. No one missed the looks he kept shooting the ground, though.

Aomine suddenly grinned. “Tetsu’s the peace mediator. Without him, we would’ve all brawled each other and died.”

“Aominecchi would’ve died first,” Kise pointed out. “You’d walk off a cliff for those gravure magazines of yours.”

“Oi! If anyone is going to die first, it’d be Midorima! Just look at him!” Aomine gestured wildly to the shooting guard. “What are you even doing? Are you looking for your Oga Aja thing? It’s—”

“Oha Asa,” Midorima corrected automatically, a tint of annoyance coloring his voice. Kuroko noticed, bemused, that his reaction exactly mirrored Aomine’s own when people mixed up his precious models.

“Yeah, whatever. It’s all superficial stuff anyway.”

Midorima glared, but what was meant to be a menacing look failed quite miserably as it was directed towards the window. Kuroko could sense a fight brewing up between the two of them, which didn’t happen quite often. The two were almost polar opposites, so they simply ignored each other most of the time.

Fortunately, the door opened, preventing a potential fight. Kuroko looked over and saw the red hair he had expected to see. After all, everyone else was already here. Only Momoi and Akashi were absent.

However, it was not the _person_ he had expected to see.

“Hey, will you cut it out? I can hear you all the way from the end of the hall!” Kagami Taiga stood at the doorway, a scowl on his face. Well, it wasn’t really accurate to be calling him standing. He was sitting in a wheelchair and his entire right leg was bandaged up.

Kuroko didn’t remember Kagami ever mentioning to him that he had injured in leg.

Murasakibara, who everyone had forgotten about—though it was a wonder how they managed to forget about someone as big as him—glanced over lazily at Kagami. “Waaa, you talk funny. What’s with your pronunciation?”

“Murasakibara,” Midorima said, setting his green glasses back on his nose. “That was rude.”

Aomine swiveled around. “Oi, how did you get those back? Was it you, Tetsu?”

“Of course it wasn’t me,” Kuroko said, keeping his usual, blank expression. However, he knew that Aomine could see right through him.

Aomine could _always_ see right through him.

Kagami blinked a couple of times, probably thinking that Aomine was talking to air. When the teal haired boy suddenly appeared, he let out a yelp and fell out of his wheelchair.

Aomine laughed. “Every. Single. Time.”

“How long have you been there?!”

“I’ve been here the whole time.”

Kagami was still wheezing, placing a hand over his chest. “I...thought...I...was...going...to...die...from...a...heart...attack...” he said, followed by a slur of gibberish that Kuroko couldn’t understand.

“Quit being a baby,” Aomine said, but his large grin on his face betrayed his emotions. “That’s Kise’s job.”

“Aominecchi is—”

“Hello,” Kuroko said calmly, cutting through their bickering voices. They stopped arguing immediately. Huh. Perhaps he _was_ a peace mediator. “My name is Kuroko Tetsuya and I am also hospitalized at the moment. Let’s get along.”

Kagami looked rather bewildered at the strange group of four scattered around the room and the nearly invisible man sitting on the bed. “Y-yeah,” he said. “Kagami Taiga. Nice to meet you too.”

Well, this meeting went a lot smoother than their first one.

Kuroko noticed that, like Murasakibara had said, Kagami’s accent was much more pronounced than it had been when they had met at Seirin. Perhaps he had corrected it, but Kuroko couldn’t imagine him doing something like that. No doubt he would’ve run off to play street basketball the moment he landed in Japan.

Kuroko turned towards Midorima, who Kuroko figured owed him for the glasses, so he would hopefully answer all his questions. “Midorima-kun? Why am I here?”

“You fell and got a bloody nose.”

“Again?” Kuroko grimaced, remembering his rather disastrous first game as a first string member.

Kagami asked the more obvious question. “Why are you in a hospital? Can’t you just get a few paper towels and wait for it to finish?”

“Of course we tried that, you dumbass. But it was like a waterfall coming out of his nose. So Midorima had this brilliant idea to bring him here and let the doctors inject all types of drugs in his system. One turned Tetsu’s face blue and it took thirty minutes just to get his face to return to that deathly pale color of his.”

“That did not happen,” Midorima said, pushing up his glasses.

“My face is not deathly pale,” Kuroko frowned.

“Kurokocchi?” Kise spoke up, and Kuroko realized that the blonde had remained silent for a long time—something Kuroko didn’t think was possible of him. “Is it just me, or are you glowing?”

“Kise, have you lost—whoa! Tetsu, you’re totally glowing!”

At first, he thought they were talking about his aura or something until he realized that they, quite literally, meant that he was actually glowing. Kuroko glanced down at his arm. It did seem lighter than usual.

“Kuro-chin’s going to heaven~”

“Be quiet, Murasakibara. Kuroko is not dying.”

“No,” Kuroko agreed. The same thing had happened last time. Aomine, of course, had barely seen the moment Kuroko disappeared last time, so it wasn't surprising that he didn't remember. “Actually, this is—”

He was gone.

There was a moment of silence, as the five people in the room stared wide-eyed at the space the boy had occupied just a moment before. He had just _vanished_ into thin air. There was no trace that he had even been there.

The room was about to turn into a pandemonium when something appeared on the bed even more surprising than the fact that Kuroko had disappeared just moments ago.

* * *

"Kuroko?!”

Kuroko blinked, and Kagami’s face appeared in front of him. He glanced around. They were in Maji Burger. A mountain of burgers was in front of Kagami, while a cup of vanilla milkshake in front of him.

Kagami, Kuroko noticed thankfully, had no wheelchair accompanying him, nor a bandaged right leg.

“Yes, Kagami-kun?” Kuroko sipped his vanilla milkshake calmly. He could feel the coolness of the mirror pressed against his leg and shifted as discretely as possible, pocketing it without Kagami’s notice.

“How long have you been here?!”

“I’ve been here all along,” Kuroko replied, though he wasn’t quite sure. Had he been here before? While he was in the mirror, did he still have a physical copy in the present time? One that could move and walk, no less. He had not been at Maji Burger when he had entered the mirror.

Kagami stared at him for a long time, as if trying to tell whether or not he was lying. Kuroko easily kept his poker face. Other than Akashi, he was the best liar that he knew. His former captain, however, always seemed to have a way to drag out the truth while keeping his own hidden.

“Well, alright,” Kagami said, giving up and returning his attention to his burgers. It still amazed Kuroko every time he saw it at how much Kagami could manage to eat. Even Aomine hadn’t managed to eat so much.

Kagami had said, ‘I’ve been Americanized,’ which made Kuroko dread ever going to that country. As he tried to envision it, the only thing he could see was a bunch of giants fighting over eating territories.

“Kagami-kun,” Kuroko said, watching as Kagami reluctantly tore his attention away from the pile of food in front of him. “Have you ever injured your leg?”

 


End file.
